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A fond farewell to Polar of GuildOx
It's no secret that we like GuildOx around here. We've covered the ever expanding ways GuildOx has offered services from Flex Raid ranking to mount and pet tracking to achievements and titles. My own personal favorite was the specialization tracking it debuted for both PvE and PvP - I know I've personally often relied on data from GuildOx when writing for the site. Developer and sole proprietor Polar has announced that he is moving on to pursue other opportunities. Since GuildOx is basically a one person operation, he's looking for someone to come and take over the site and keep it moving forward as we go into the next expansion. If you think you have the time, interest, and skills necessary, contact Polar <at> GuildOx.com. Best of luck to you in the future, Polar, and best of luck to GuildOx, a very useful service that hopefully will get to stick around for the future!
GuildOx launches Flex Raid ranking
WoW ranking database GuildOx has just announced a new feature -- world-first Flex guild progress ranking for Flex raid groups. According to data gathered by the fine folks at GuildOx, 64% of guilds that have raided Siege of Orgrimmar on normal mode have also completed kills using Flexible Raids as well. Given the popularity of the format, GuildOx decided to create a ranking list for guilds that raid on that difficulty. Flex ranking works the same as the usual raid progress ranking, with guilds being ranked by the number of encounters completed, and the date of their last kill. For players that are diving full-force into Flex raids, the new rankings list should be a nice addition. And for players that haven't delved into Flex raids, it's interesting to see just how many guilds are taking that step, and how far they've gotten in the content. Myself, I'm curious as to how the rankings will be received -- since Flex raids can take any number of people, they're an entirely different animal than 10 or 25 man raiding. With 10 man ranking, you know you're being ranked against other 10 man guilds, and the same applies to 25 man raiding as well. But with Flex, you could be raiding with 12, and another guild with 24. Interesting questions aside, it's nice to see we've got a ranking system in place for Flex raiding enthusiasts. As always, rank listings can be filtered and sorted by region or server. You can check out the full list of ranked guilds and their progress on GuildOx.
Guildox adds missing mounts and pets feature
Collectors rejoice! Guildox has recently added a new feature to make your lives easier in your quest for more, more, more! Mounts, pets, you name it. Well, actually, it's just mounts and pets for now, but this is a great little feature. As Guildox told us when they let us know about this, "it works similar to the battle.net site except for one major difference - we sort the pets based on rarity. It will show the most common pets/mounts that you don't have at the top of the list so you know which are the easier ones to chase." This is such a great idea, and even as someone who isn't heavily into pet or mount collection, it's really interesting to see if there are any really obvious omissions from my current collection. For example, it seems that I haven't yet paid the 750 gold for the Reins of the Dark Phoenix, which almost 60% of players have, and that I should really look at getting my hands on some riding turtles, as over half the game's population has already done so, so it can't be that hard! If you want to see what you're missing, check out their new page.
GuildOx launches Brawler's Guild ranking system
GuildOx have just released yet another ranking system for WoW players, to go with their achievement and title rankings, and mount and pet rankings! GuildOx has rankings for pretty much everything you can think of, and their latest addition, the Brawler's Guild rankings are another, much requested, string to their bow. They don't, however, track anything but the final achievement of the guild, the Now You're Just Showing Off achievement, and when players got it on each realm, region, and even worldwide. This achievement is kind of the pinnacle of brawling prowess, but it would also be excellent to see rankings for those further down, for example, to see if there's a glut of players stuck on Yikkan Izu or whether it's just that my shadow priest is undergeared, or played by someone terrible at shadow priests. One very interesting thing about these stats is the prominence of ranged DPS among the higher rankings. Mages, elemental shaman, warlocks, balance druids, and hunters all rank pretty high in their top 100 listings, with melee classes seeming not to be able to keep up with their ranged cousins. Is this indicative of a ranged DPS bias in the Brawler's Guild boss design? Also, do note that GuildOx's database is still gathering, so don't check your realm and assume that, because it's empty, you can get ahead and claim the top spot! It will take a little while to stabilize and be completely accurate, thanks to how the database works. But do check it out! Like all their ranking information, it makes interesting reading.
Blizzard developers discuss patch 5.2 and more
Last week was a flurry of preparation for patch 5.2's launch, including a whole host of developer interviews. WoW Insider had the opportunity to sit down and chat with Lead Quest Designer Dave Kosak, but there were plenty more interviews to be had as the week progressed. And just in case you happened to miss any of that developer excitement, we've put together a roundup of all the fan site interviews in one handy spot. Battlecraft quizzes Cory Stockton on 5.2 content (Italian/English) Blizzplanet talks game development with Tom Chilton Epic Podcast chats 5.2 story and content with Dave Kosak and Cory Stockton Gamebreaker TV talks trailer lore with Dave Kosak Legendary digs into design with Greg Street and Ion Hazzikostas GuildOx talks raiding and group content with Ion Hazzikostas The Instance talks 5.2, Twitter and more with Greg Street JudgeHype chats with Tom Chilton about game development and 5.2 (French/English) Totemspot discusses class balance and more with Greg Street Twizzcast digs into running MMOs with Tom Chilton Vanion chats 5.2 content with Dave Kosak (German/English) WoW Insider discusses lore, dailies and more with Dave Kosak Warcraft Pets talks pet battles and more with Cory Stockton Wowhead chats about group content, encounters and 5.2 with Ion Hazzikostas While the same developers may have done multiple interviews, each interview offers a different look at what's in store for patch 5.2 and beyond. It's certainly nice to see the developers out and about in the community and talking content -- and one thing's for certain, everyone is pumped for patch 5.2's release. Be sure to check out all of the interviews for the most in-depth look at patch 5.2 you can get.
GuildOx interviews Ion Hazzikostas
As patch 5.2 looms ever closer, Blizzard has opened their doors, offering insights into the ideas, plans and processes behind the upcoming patch. WoW Insider's Anne Stickney interviewed Lead Quest Designer Dave Kosak yesterday, and now GuildOx has published their interview with Lead Encounter Designer Ion Hazzikostas. The GuildOx interview brings up many interesting insights into the new raid, from the man leading the team who designed it. WoW Insider found several of Ion's answers particularly interesting, for example, he indicated that the Dark Animus fight, as pictured above, is probably the most innovative, and we certainly agree. Ion also has some tips for guilds tackling the new raid: Take your time, pace yourself, and enjoy the variety of the tier. It's a large one. There are fights that focus on different skills, and if you're struggling with one encounter, it's quite possible that a fight that plays to your group's strengths, and which you'll have a much easier time with, lies just over that hill. If your guild runs into a roadblock on Normal mode, consider revisiting any 5.0 raids that you never finished, or trying some of the 5.0 Heroics for more gear upgrades to complement the ilvl-522 and -528 gear you'll be getting from your Throne of Thunder kills each week.
Guildox ranks achievements and titles
GuildOx just launched a new feature on their website: Popular Achievements and Popular Titles Rankings. This feature does exactly what it says on the tin -- provides information on the game's most popular achievements and titles. This feature makes really interesting reading, and GuildOx have gone to some length to ensure the data is accurate, saying that they have used their Character Database and filtered out alts using their alt detection. WoW Insider could spend all day drawing interesting conclusions from the database, for example, the highest ranked holiday achievement title is The Hallowed, so that could mean the requirements make it the easiest to get, or that people just really love Hallow's End. In a similar vein, more players have the Arathi Basin Victory achievement and the Alterac Valley Victory achievement than have the Warsong Gulch Victory one. Why is that? Of course, this feature can't answer that question, but it's fun to speculate! And while you're over at GuildOx, don't forget to check out their popular mounts and pets databases -- see where yours rank!
The Care and Feeding of Warriors: DPS warrior performance and perception
Every week, WoW Insider brings you The Care and Feeding of Warriors, the column dedicated to arms, fury and protection warriors. Despite repeated blows to the head from dragons, demons, Old Gods and whatever that thing over there was, Matthew Rossi will be your host. If you didn't read Brian Wood's excellent State of DPS in Mists of Pandaria post yet this week, you should before we go any further, because I'm going to be discussing it as well as GuildOx's study of the most popular raiding and PvP specs. What I'm seeing studying these two related but different posts (one about actual DPS, the other about representation) is as follows. Fury is twice as popular as arms for PvE DPS, but both warrior DPS specs combined are less popular than either of the popular rogue specs or any of the really popular DPS specs. Arms absolutely dominates warrior PvP, and is one of the single most popular specs in PvP at the moment. Fury's DPS is absolutely middle of the road in 10 and 25 man normal raiding right now, hovering right around the baseline. Fury sees a sudden shift upwards when going from normal to heroic raiding - Fury is a contender for the top DPS spec in 10's, and practically is the top spec in heroic 25's. Now, there's a lot that we can't say based on the data we have from these two posts - for starters, which fury, TG or SMF? These also don't tell us what talents in particular these crushingly dominant arms warriors are taking for PvP (if I had to guess, though, based on the Avatar nerf in patch 5.1 I'd go with a Bladestorm/Avatar combo) or what talents fury is using in PvE. Still, there's still a lot to talk about here. What does all of this mean?
GuildOx debuts specialization tracking for PvP and PvE
Are you ever curious as to which specs are the most popular for raiding or PvP? Well, GuildOx has you covered. Both for PvE and PvP in fact. There's a lot of interesting things to pull out of this data. For starters, just looking at the PvP data, where are the rogues? Seeing rogues so low in PvP (an area they've dominated as recently as Cataclysm) is kind of a shocker. Frost mages, shadow priests, arms warriors, beast mastery hunters and frost DK's are the most dominant non-healing specs in PvP right now. Over on the PvE side of the fence, (drawn from the top 5% of raiding characters) we see that Blood DK's and Guardian Druids are the most popular raid tanks, but that all tank classes are fairly close together save for brewmaster monks. I don't know why but clearly they're not taking off as tanks yet, perhaps due to entrenchment. Most raids tend towards established tanks, after all. For DPS classes, fire mages and shadow priests are the most popular, followed by beast mastery hunters and affliction warlocks. This is interesting when contrasted with the actual state of DPS classes in normal and heroic raiding atm. Rogues are interestingly split between assassination and combat, keeping them from challenging any of these classes. As for healing, restoration shamans and druids and holy paladins seem to be on top, but discipline priests look strong as well, with mistweaver monks trailing behind. You can head over to GuildOx and dig around for yourself. Mists of Pandaria is here! The level cap has been raised to 90, many players have returned to Azeroth, and pet battles are taking the world by storm. Keep an eye out for all of the latest news, and check out our comprehensive guide to Mists of Pandaria for everything you'll ever need to know.
GuildOx interviews new World First guild Arctica
While the rest of the world were banging their heads against the overtuned first boss in the Heart of Fear raid, one relatively unknown Finnish guild decided to go about their initial look into the new raid a slightly different way. Arctica, of Chromaggus-EU, is a Finnish guild just like Paragon, and just like Paragon they only take players who understand Finnish. You don't have to speak it, only understand it. And that's no mean feat. Finnish is one of the least spoken languages in Europe, with only five million native speakers, and having tried it myself, one of the most baffling to learn. But despite their relatively small pool of eligible applicants, Arctica look to be taking after their better-known fellow Finns, and progressing into World Firsts, taking two of the five available in this 10-man heroic progress race, having defeated both Ta'yak and Garalon before any other guild. They, unlike the others, skipped straight past the infamous Vizier Zor'lok, facing Ta'yak first in Heroic. GuildOx was joined by Kapsu and Sponde of Arctica to discuss their progress into 10-man Heroic Heart of Fear. Check out the interview over at GuildOx, and find out what's in the water in Finland that makes such good raiders! Mists of Pandaria is here! The level cap has been raised to 90, many players have returned to Azeroth, and pet battles are taking the world by storm. Keep an eye out for all of the latest news, and check out our comprehensive guide to Mists of Pandaria for everything you'll ever need to know.
The Data Guy: Meet the dev behind The Undermine Journal, Realm Pop, and more
Every now and again, a double facepalm moment occurs among potential news tipsters deep in the bosom of the WoW player community. "Say what?! 15 Minutes of Fame hasn't featured this guy yet?!?" It happens. There are only 52 weeks in a year, after all (even if weeks like this one manage to include a few extra minutes of fame). So let's get cracking. You know that cliché about people who "toil quietly behind the scenes"? This interview is with that guy. Meet the unassuming Erorus, the man behind The Undermine Journal, Realm Pop, and a handful of other hard-working WoW resource sites. WoW Insider: We WoW players are in your debt, Erorus! One look at your centralized project website, everynothing.net, and it's obvious that you're a very busy guy. Erorus: EveryNothing.net was supposed to be a list of all the things I'm working on, both inside and outside of WoW, but I don't keep it as updated as I should. Most projects end up being something I spin up in a week or two and let run, the only projects I really kept up with over time were Quick Armory back in The Burning Crusade and Wrath of the Lich King days, and The Undermine Journal since the auction house came to the armory back in early Wrath of the Lich King. My currently supported projects are: The Undermine Journal Auction house pricing history and event notification system Realm Pop Realm census and population statistics Phenix Armory A spiritual successor to the now-defunct Quick Armory; look-ups for characters focusing on achievement, companion and recipe collection Goblinventory A small addon and website to help you view and share all the items in your bags and banks Transmog Fashion A tumblelog that displays random transmogged characters
10 most common names for monks
It's another expansion with a new class, making it a perfect time to kick back and reflect on our auspicious naming conventions. After all, certainly the most popular monk names are steeped in lore and dignity, right? Our good pals over at GuildOx have sorted through huge, mountainous stacks of data to find the most popular monk names. These are the same folks who told us about popular warrior names like Cleaveland and Sunderwear, as well as common paladin names like Layonhooves and Unstopbubble. So, what are the most popular names for monks? Are they roleplaying names or original creations? Well, let's take a look and unveil the top 10 most popular monk names.
FS of Ravencrest-EU gets world first level 90? [UPDATE: Rolled back]
While we're not ready to declare it official, it appears the world's first level 90 has been achieved. FS of the Ravencrest-EU realm dinged just a short time ago, according to GuildOx. It's important to take these early dings with a healthy dose of skepticism, as in the past they've been accompanied by swift action on Blizzard's part when the leveling method has been discovered to be exploitative. Some high-profile people in Cataclysm took park in an exploit, only to find themselves slapped with a level decrease back to 80. We'll keep you updated as we learn more about this developing story, but if this is a legit power leveling, then it's been done extremely fast. Mists only released in the EU a little over four hours ago. Updated 1:30 a.m. EDT 9/25/12: Apparently he's been rolled back to 87, which follows what many in the forums are claiming (although there hasn't been any evidence until now).
GuildOx introduces Alt Detection
WoW database site GuildOx, which ranks guilds, players and loot from World of Warcraft by reading data via the official WoW API, has introduced a sparkly new service for would-be recruiters. Thanks to the introduction of account-wide achievements, GuildOx, along with any other site that is smart enough to extract this information from the API, can use the cross-account information to tell you exactly who that new player's alts are that's applying to your guild. So, if someone claims to have amazing gear, and anything else that isn't a linkable achievement on an alt, you can now check it out on GuildOx. The functionality could allow a guild leader to see if the new person they're picking up is actually the worst trade chat troll on the server, for example. As GuildOx says, this can provide extra insight into applicants when recruiting new guild members. If you think you'd benefit from this, then you can check it out on GuildOx's new service by viewing one of the site creator's characters, and all their alts. There is, of course, a down side.
GuildOx player analysis highlights the warlock decline
The folks at GuildOx have gone through their database and done some simple filtering that reveals some fascinating things about who is raiding heroic Dragon Soul. GuildOx started with level 85 characters, filtered for characters with ilevel 400 gear, and then filtered out anyone with PvP gear. What you see in the chart above is the result of that work -- a representative sample of who out of the over 13 million level 85 characters in the GuildOx database is raiding heroic Dragon Soul. If you remember the post about the complexity of systems and player retention that I made a couple of weeks back, you'll remember that I mentioned Cynwise's excellent posts about the warlock decline. Well, here it is again reflected in GuildOx's data. Warlocks are the least played class in heroic raiding. Warriors aren't doing much better, really. Most other classes seem fairly healthy, with classes that have healing specs doing fairly well and rogues absolutely ruling heroic raiding despite being one of the least-played classes in the game overall. It gets even more interesting once we get to look at the GuildOx spec-by-spec breakdown.
1,000 guilds have killed heroic Ragnaros
GuildOx, one of the premier guild ranking and data sites for WoW raiding, reports that 1,000 guilds have defeated the heroic Ragnaros encounter in Firelands. This number represents 2% of the entire pool of active raiding guilds, as well as 4.2% of the guilds that are raiding heroic Firelands content. If that doesn't put things into perspective for you with regard to Blizzard's trying to make raiding more accessible, I don't know what will. Interestingly, 76% of the heroic Ragnaros kills have been completed in 10-man raids, with 24% of the kills in 25-man groups. Ten-man raiding has certainly made endgame raiding significantly more accessible, and 25-man only guilds seem to be struggling to keep their numbers as high as they once were, especially when the 10-man versions of the encounters are more accessible.
GuildOx shares the most popular Alliance and Horde names by race
Last week, GuildOx shared with WoW Insider the top 10 character names by class in World of Warcraft based on the new data pulled from Blizzard's awesome new APIs and information sharing services. If you're not familiar with GuildOx, these guys catalog and rank top progression guilds in WoW and parse lots of cool information. Now, GuildOx is back with the top 10 names by race and faction, proving that the era of creating punny names on World of Warcraft is far from over. We'll first take a look at the Alliance races and then hit up the Horde. Human Palatinus Percivale Tyrael Fordragon Thrasius Crixxus Sangrial Gavinrad Dalson Kikyo Human names are tough to "pun up," as it were, because they are pretty much just us. Would you name your own children with punny-sounding names or ironic references to video games? Actually, don't answer that -- some of you with kids named Donkey Kong are going to get mad at me. Actually, when I do have a daughter and I name her Samus, I'll come back and read this paragraph and regret everything I've ever said.
GuildOx shares the most popular WoW character names by class
GuildOx, one of the premier services that ranks, tracks, and parses the top guilds and their progression in WoW, has been using Blizzard's new character APIs to some pretty hilarious ends. After mining out 11 million character names, GuildOx has sent us the most popular character names by class in World of Warcraft. As you'd expect, the pun meter is off the charts. You'll laugh. You'll cry. Your immersion will be broken. Let's have a look at the most popular names in World of Warcraft. Warriors Glitterstorm Cleaveland Ragebar Brostorm Cleaveage Ragestarved Sunderwear Executie Skillstorm Sunderpants Warrior characters love using skill names or the rage mechanic in their names. I'm actually a culprit of this phenomenon, except I like to think I was clever about it. My Night Elf warrior, for the brief time that I was raiding on the Alliance side of things, was named Rageleaf. It was awesome. Stop judging me.
GuildOx finds the world's most experienced raid boss killer
Guild ranking and progression tracking site GuildOx has assembled data on World of Warcraft's most experienced raider in terms of boss kills -- a Troll mage named Meltymon from the Destromath (EU) server. Meltymon has 5,389 raid boss kills, most on normal difficulty, going back to the beginning of the game's raiding challenges. Now, while Meltymon isn't the most experienced raider in terms of content completed, since heroic Ragnaros is still unaccounted for, the number of total raid boss kills over the lifetime of the character is still pretty impressive. The most interesting part of the ranking on GuildOx is that the most raid boss kills do not come from characters in the cutting-edge guilds. In fact, most of the higher-ups on the list are from guilds doing normal content each week with a smattering of heroic kills thrown in. The larger, more progressed guilds tend to do the content on their mains until completion for world firsts and then swap to alts or take time away from the game until a new patch hits and new challenges appear. All of these new rankings on GuildOx are possible because of the new APIs we had talked about in the past and are really providing developers and site owners with some cool tools to play around with. Brace yourselves for what could be some of most exciting updates to the game recently with patch 4.3. Look at what's ahead: new item storage options, cross-realm raiding, cosmetic armor skinning and your chance to battle the mighty Deathwing -- from astride his back!
A survey of gear levels in current 10- and 25-man Cataclysm raiding
If you've been curious whether or not you're geared enough to start raiding, the answer is "definitely maybe." Let me explain. The nice people at GuildOx have collected and passed on their information for the average gear level for groups completing 10- and 25-man raids, and they were good enough to share this information with us. There are several interesting things to keep in mind about these numbers. These numbers are from the last seven days and only for the first time a group beat the encounter. Subsequent kills aren't counted in this data set. The average ilevel is higher for almost every single Cataclysm raid fight on 10-man than on 25-man. That is, the fights were first overcome by groups in higher ilevel gear on 10-man than on 25-man. Ascendant Council seems to be the only real exception to this rule. The ilevels for the groups defeating this content are well achievable, starting at 337 for Omnotron Defense System and Conclave of Wind on 25-man. This is well within the level of gearing achievable through heroics. Even the 10-man encounters don't require much more, starting around ilevel 341. There's a lot more data for heroic 25-man encounters than heroic 10s. Some fights don't seem to have had many or any clears on 10 for this data push. Heroic Conclave of Wind had 40 kills on 25s and none on 10s, while Ascendant Council on normal seems to be easier on 10s than 25s for some reason. See the data in full behind the jump; you can make your own conclusions, but I find the higher ilevel for 10-man clears over 25-man to be very, very interesting indeed. I also find it very heartening that yes, you can gear up for this in heroics and rep rewards, so don't let your gear hold you back from attempting these raids.
